Shame. See: Cheney, Dick. See also: Cheney, Liz

Liz and Dick Cheney, cheerleaders for more war. Dick Cheney wears a permanent sneer to show his contempt.

June 21, 2014 | Dick Cheney and his daughter Liz are the new Axis of Evil.

There is no doubt that the mess in Iraq is just that: a terrible and dangerous mess. That said, the very last person who should be offering any criticism is Dick Cheney. But he and daughter Liz were amply endowed with chutzpah, or gall.

Earlier this week the Wall Street Journal published an op-ed by the Cheneys that made a scathing attack on President Obama for his handling of the Iraq war. The first sentence of paragraph two tells you all you need to know: "Rarely has a U.S. president been so wrong about so much at the expense of so many."

That sentence fits George W Bush to a T, but the Cheney's were talking about Barack Obama. It was apparently written with no sense of irony, nor shame.

Even Megyn Kelley of Fox News could not swallow Dick Cheney's diatribe (NationalPost.com). After reading the quote she said, "But time and time again, history has proven that you got it wrong as well, sir.” She then listed many of the specifics that Cheney was wrong about and asked, "Now with almost one trillion dollars spent there with 4,500 American lives lost there, what do you say to those who say you were so wrong about so much at the expense of so many?" Cheney was taken aback; read about it here (the video seems to be "unavailable" all of a sudden).

In the Washington Post, EJ Dionne, in an op-ed under the title "Dick Cheney, did you really want to go there?" was astonished by the Cheney's op-ed and remarked that "It's not every day that a leader of the previous administration suggests that the current president is a 'fool' and accuses him of intentionally weakening the United States."

When it comes to being wrong about Iraq, Dick Cheney has been in a class by himself. It was Cheney who said, “Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction. There is no doubt he is amassing them to use against our friends, against our allies, and against us.”

It was Cheney who said: “it’s been pretty well confirmed” that 9/11 hijacker Mohammed Atta “did go to Prague and he did meet with a senior official of the Iraqi intelligence service.”

It was Cheney who said: “we do know, with absolute certainty, that [Saddam Hussein] is using his procurement system to acquire the equipment he needs in order to enrich uranium to build a nuclear weapon”

It was Cheney who said in 2005: “I think they're in the last throes, if you will, of the insurgency.”

All those things, and many more, were false. There is not a single person in America — not Bill Kristol, not Paul Wolfowitz, not Don Rumsfeld, no pundit, not even President Bush himself — who has been more wrong and more shamelessly dishonest on the topic of Iraq than Dick Cheney.

And now, as the cascade of misery and death and chaos he did so much to unleash rages anew, Cheney has the unadulterated gall to come before the country and tell us that it’s all someone else’s fault, and if we would only listen to him then we could keep America safe forever. How dumb would we have to be to listen?

Dick and Liz announce the Alliance for a Strong America

The Cheneys also announced the formation of The Alliance for a Strong America, a 501(c)4 (a so-called "social welfare" organization, exempt under IRS rules) to advocate for growing American strength and power. The United States, that spends more on defense than the next 8 countries combined , is just too much a wuss to satisfy the Cheneys.

The Cheneys are just the most egregious offenders. Close behind them is a parade of warmongers marching to the same drummer. At the head of the parade are the usual suspects, John McCain and his acolyte Lindsay Graham, and the ranks are swelled by other neocons and pundits who cheered on the 2003 march to war in Iraq.

The question is, why are so many otherwise respectable news organizations giving the Cheneys and others who got us into this mess in the first place giving any airtime or column inches to these failures? The New Republic calls it media malpractice.